Since my family and I don’t “do” fast food, and we only eat in restaurants a handful of times per week, I seem to do exorbitant amounts of cooking around here.  Cooking is something I just do (it’s either that or go hungry, after all), and I can’t say that I’m passionate about it.  So, the only thing I really wanted for Mother’s Day was a day off from being primarily responsible for my family’s meals.  I didn’t want to eat out (restaurants are packed on Mother’s Day), just stay at home and have a break.

Thunderstorms hit Charleston and the surrounding areas at around noon yesterday.  We have thunderstorms here all the time, especially during this time of the year, and I didn’t see anything extraordinary about the ones we had yesterday.  But, almost immediately after the storm began, our electricity went off.  I figured it would come back on in a few minutes (or maybe in an hour or two, at most), but when it wasn’t on by 2 PM, I called Appalachian Power.  They were undoubtedly being bombarded by calls from customers with no electricity, so they were playing a recorded message thatsaid they expected service to be restored to all customers in the Charleston area by midnight on May 13.  Midnight on May 13??  Um, I can’t live without hot water (not to mention an internet connection) for two whole days! 

Alexander had to return to Louisville in the late afternoon yesterday, and he suggested that the kids and I accompany him there until Tuesday to escape our power outage.  However, I didn’t want to leave our pets here alone (for one thing, the night time temperatures are supposed to go down into the 40s for the next few days), and, because I’m a worrywart,  I was concerned that when the power ultimately did come back on, there would be a power surge, a fuse would blow, and our house would catch on fire (I’m not even sure that’s actually possible) or something of the sort, and then I would feel forever guilty for ”abandoning” our pets for the sake of my own comfort.  So, I decided to stay here and ride it out.  Alexander left for Louisville, and the kids and I remained at home, feeling rather pioneer-ish.      

Just as the kids and I were preparing to go to the nearest restaurant with free Wi-Fi so that I could check my e-mail, and perhaps calm my withdrawal symptoms for pogo.com by playing a few games of Mahjong Garden at 8:30 PM, our electricity came back on.  Whew, what a relief!   I told the kids we wouldn’t make good Amish people, since going a mere 8 hours without electricity was an extreme hardship for us.

The power outages as a result of yesterday’s storms were widespread.  Peter was supposed to attend a birthday party this afternoon at a friend’s house who lives in rural Lincoln County.  The boy’s mother called this morning to say they’d canceled the party because they’d been without electricity for over 24 hours, and their service wasn’t expected to be restored until Tuesday. 

So, I got my requested break from cooking on Mother’s Day, but not quite in the manner that I’d expected.  The moral of this story is “be careful what you wish for, because it just might come true.”